THE BREATH OF LIFE 



independent source of energy, seems to me obvious 

 enough, but that it does not manifest energy, use 

 energy, or "exert force," is far from obvious. If a 

 growing plant or tree does not exert force by reason 

 of its growing, or by virtue of a specific kind of ac- 

 tivity among its particles, which we name life, and 

 which does not take place in a stone or in a bar of 

 iron or in dead timber, then how can we say that any 

 mechanical device or explosive compound exerts 

 force? The steam-engine does not create force, nei- 

 ther does the exploding dynamite, but these things 

 exert force. We have to think of the sum total of 

 the force of the universe, as of matter itself, as a 

 constant factor, that can neither be increased nor 

 diminished. All activity, organic and inorganic, 

 draws upon this force: the plant and tree, as well as 

 the engine and the explosive the winds, the tides, 

 the animal, the vegetable alike. I can think of but 

 one force, but of any number of manifestations of 

 force, and of two distinct kinds of manifestations, 

 the organic and the inorganic, or the vital and the 

 physical, the latter divisible into the chemical 

 and the mechanical, the former made up of these 

 two working in infinite complexity because drawn 

 into new relations, and lifted to higher ends by this 

 something we call life. 



We think of something in the organic that lifts 

 and moves and redistributes dead matter, and 

 builds it up into the ten thousand new forms which 

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